About 516 years ago, a Douglas fir seed germinated not far from what would become known as the Nitinat River, west of Cowichan Lake. It coincided with some of the most significant convergences of peoples, cultures and climate in North America’s and British Columbia’s history… An updated display at the forestry centre on West Burnside Road now chronicles those intersecting timelines. Instead of the single Euro-focused timeline of the previous display housed in the forestry centre’s lobby for 55 years, the revised exhibit documents local Indigenous and settler historic milestones, the tree’s own significant lifetime events, and changes in climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide for the five centuries recorded in the growth rings in the discs of the first-growth behemoth and a corresponding second-growth tree.